Ready, Set, GO! Or: Ready or Not, Here We Come

This is it, gang.  Home stretch, the final countdown, last chance for gas, the 90th minute.  We rehearse tonight, we rehearse on Sunday night, on Monday we pack up the truck and on Tuesday - we're "home", at the theater in Beer Sheva, for a technical rehearsal. Which usually goes on well into the wee hours.....

 Wednesday night full dress rehearsal, and on Thursday March 3 CAMELOT is up and running!

We've had our fair share of drama this year. 

King Arthur got laryngitis, and none of Merlin's potions could help. Some last minute changes were made to the script.  Gah!  Final bits of scenery have yet to be delivered, and our costume designer is still trying to get the knights' helmets to work.  On Thursday, Lancelot sang an entire solo with his visor down..... made for some interesting echo effects.

Incidentally, we're celebrating LOGON's 35th season this year!!!  Happy Birthday LOGON!

On a personal note, I am pleased to report that this year I'm having NO TROUBLE AT ALL remembering my lines.  Possibly because i don't actually have any lines, but whatever, it feels great.  

Also: intended to do a "Camelot on the Couch" post about King Arthur, but only about ten people read the last post (about Lancelot) -- [THANKS GUYS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!!] - so decided that maybe it wasn't an interesting thread.  If anyone is interested, let me know in the comments, and it will be done.  Your wish is my command!

So!!!  Hope people will turn out in their multitudes to join us, for an evening, where the rain may never fall til after sundown, and by 8 the morning fog must disappear.  

See you at the show!

PS   We have one dear Lady of the Court who is ill and will apparently not be able to perform with us this season.  Get Well Quick, dear lady, we miss you much, verily!  

 

Camelot on the Couch: Was Lancelot "on the spectrum"?

Do you remember Baskins & Robbins Ice Cream Parlors?  They used to have a "flavor of the month".  Mmmmmmm..........   Hang on, now i need to go get some ice cream, brb.

OK, back.  But it's freezing cold in this castle, so i settled for some hot spiced wine instead.  Please ignore all subsequent spelling errors.  Thank you kindly.

On to the Character of the Week:  Let us now consider Lancelot du Lac.  Lance arrives "from far-off France", having heard The Call to join King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.  His sincerity and dedication immediately win Arthur's heart, 

 You shall be my right-hand knight, Lance, but on my left.  Never did get that straight, whot?

but pretty much everything else about him drives everyone else up the wall:  he's FRENCH, but that's only the beginning!  He is the prototype Captain America: outrageously strong, fit, bold, 

 "I've never lost in battle or game; I'm simply the best by far....."

and so Pure of Heart that he makes the Eagle Scouts look like the Chippendales.  

"And here I stand as pure as a pray'r Incredibly clean, with virtue to spare The godliest man I know"

Now, here's the thing:  Lancelot is not some boastful, stuck up blowhard (think Gaston, for example, in Beauty & The Beast).  He really IS everything he says he is, but he's tone-deaf about it sounds to others.  He immediately riles the Queen (hate at first sight, who knew that trope was so old?!), who conspires to have him defeated at the jousts.  Things do not, however, go as planned, and in the end he makes good on his most far-fetched boast:  

"The soul of a knight should be a thing remarkable His heart and his mind as pure as morning dew With a will and a self-restraint That's the envy of ev'ry saint He could easily work a miracle or two"

So what's the problem here?

The problem is that Lance can't sustain his purity, when push comes to shove.  

Lancelot has lived his life as a man apart; obsessively devoted to bettering himself - trying to perfect himself - he admits to having shut out all others.  As long as he remains in his bubble, he's good to go, remaining as saintly as he wishes to be.

We needed a cat here, don't you think?

But in Camelot, through his fierce devotion to Arthur, he is exposed to Queen Guenivere,  and he soon discovers that he is NOT the equal of his ideals:

"To love and desire he ought to be unsparkable The ways of the flesh should offer no allure"

Lancelot falls in love with Guenevere, and even though - as befits the time and place - there is no indication that they ever consumate that love, Lancelot has, in one fell stroke, pretty much committed the ultimate betrayal:

Fallen in love with a married woman

Who is the wife of his best friend

And who is the Queen of his country.

Talk about the trifecta.  

I wonder quite a bit about what happens to Lancelot after the events depicted in the show.  Does he live the rest of his life consumed with shame?  Full of self-hatred and regret?  Does he forgive himself, or try to find salvation via some noble quest?  There is that whole Holy Grail thing, but that's out of the scope of the show.

I love how bored the squire appears to be.  Rehearsals get me feeling like that sometimes, too.

Here's something to contemplate in your spare time:  is it possible that Lance was somewhere along the spectrum of Asperger's disease, just a little bit autistic?  Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the disorder:  Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome, Asperger disorder (AD) or simply Asperger's, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

There is his single-minded, obsessive devotion to achieving perfection (and to perfecting Chivalry, as well). There is his difficulty in understanding the emotions and reactions of others.  His social isolation.  

If this is so, then his attraction to Jenny is all the more excruciating, on an epic scale.  King Arthur is a tragic figure in many ways, but when you think about it.....  it's really Lancelot whose story breaks your heart.  

Coming up next:  Camelot on the Couch looks at his majesty KING ARTHUR!  

  

The LOGON production of CAMELOT opens in Beer Sheva on March 3!  

Tickets and performance information at LOGON Hotline 08-6414081 or at 
https://www.tixwise.co.il/he/camelot

Performances in Beer Sheva, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Netanya, Rechovot, Haifa, and Modi'in

 

Camelot on the Couch: The Queen and the Monkey's Paw

It's not really her fault.  Guenevere lived a very sheltered life; we are told that her trip to marry King Arthur is actually the first time in her life that she has been allowed out of the castle.  She is a "good girl"; as she sings to Saint Genevieve, "you must admit I've always been a lamb".  

 OK, not such a lamb in this painting.  In fact, here she looks more like Cersei Lannister.  Let's try again.

Much better. 

When we first meet Guenevere, she is awash in the romantic fantasies common to her era (this would be a good time to go back and read the blog entries "It's Complicated", parts 1,2 and 3, from 2013).  She sings of "the simple joys of maidenhood": 

Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?
Where are all those adoring daring boys?
Where's the knight pining so for me
he leaps to death in woe for me?
....
Shan't I have the normal life a maiden should?
Shall I never be rescued in the wood?
Shall two knights never tilt for me 
and let their blood be spilt for me?
....
Shall I not be on a pedestal, 
Worshipped and competed for?
Not be carried off, or better st'll,
Cause a little war?
....
Shall a feud not begin for me?
Shall kith not kill their kin for me?
Oh where are the trivial joys?
Harmless, convivial joys?
Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?

Delightful, no?  But this song actually sets up the entire sad story of Guenevere: she never read "The Monkey's Paw", and never learned the great truth: Be careful what you wish for, for you may get it.   [Note: DO NOT read "The Monkey's Paw" while home alone on a dark and stormy night.]

Pictured: Not a monkey paw.  But a paw.  At least that.

Our Queen is a simple girl at heart.  Her one stab at rebellion - she tries to flee before actually meeting Arthur - ends in a whimper, as she is charmed by the loveliness of Camelot and the delightful man/boy King.  Later on, she will torment the King by willfully trying to undermine the dashing Lancelot; the psychologist wonders if, at that point, she is simply jealous of the close relationship he seems to have with Arthur.  

Years go by and many things happen (trying not to inject too many spoilers into the blog!), but in the end, Guenevere will be rescued (as she dreamed, though not in a wood) and she will, in fact, cause a 'little war' --- and discover that it isn't nearly as much fun as she thought it would be.  In fact, it will be a terrible thing, bringing the dream of Camelot crashing down upon King Arthur:

Guenevere, Guenevere
In that dim, mournful year
Saw the men she held most dear
Go to war for Guenevere

 The original Knight on a White Horse - to the rescue

Guenevere is NOT evil.  She is naive, she is a bit shallow (in her youth, at the least), she's not even too smart, but she is loyal, decent, and good.  Unfortunately, this will not be enough to save the realm, or her happiness, and therein lies a deep layer of tragedy.

The LOGON production of CAMELOT opens in Beer Sheva on March 3!  

Tickets and performance information at LOGON Hotline 08-6414081 or at 
https://www.tixwise.co.il/he/camelot

Performances in Beer Sheva, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Netanya, Rechovot, Haifa, and Modi'in

Camelot on the Couch: Mordred, the Snake in the Garden

What self-respecting drama doesn't have an evil villain? 

 Popeye and his Blutto.... Othello and his Iago..... Snow White and her evil stepmother.... Luke Skywalker and his Darth Vader..... The Roadrunner and his Wile E. Coyote....  the Transformers and the Autobots..... and so on and so forth.

Who can think "Thundercats" without going MUMMMMMRAAAHHHHHHHH?  We expect our villains to do mean, terrible things.

 
 Villains are violent, destructive; they lie, cheat, steal and kill. 

 (Or at least try to, until the Hero stops them.)  Villains are scary and awful and horrible (also, usually ugly).

Although not always.

 















Previous LOGON shows have featured some great villains.  In Oklahoma!, Judd tried to kill our Hero with a deadly kaleidoscope (extra points for creativity there, dude).  


Villains are often portrayed as wearing black... 

SO!
You might expect the story of King Arthur to have as a villain a big, evil knight - an antihero in coal black armor and an ugly visor on his helmet, a vicious hulk who goes thwacking about killing innocent damsels and small furry animals....  But you would be wrong.  The villain of Camelot describes himself as "free and happy little me".  And goes about unarmed. And throughout the play - strikes noone, tells no lies, steals nothing, doesn't even dip a girl's braid in the inkwell.  Yet he manages to completely destroy Camelot. How does he DO that?

The answer is: with psychological judo.  That is to say, Mordred doesn't have to DO anything bad TO anyone else.... he just sets them up to give in to their own weaknesses. Morgan La Fey likes Arthur, and doesn't like Mordred, yet Mordred gets her to trap Arthur behind an invisible wall... with a little bribe.

Mordred will not trick or force Lancelot and Gueneviere to do what they do..... he only provides the opportunity.  He opens the door.... but they walk through it, under their own steam and of their own free will.  Mordred will trap King Arthur into a no-win scenerio (think Kobayashi Maru),  assisted by Arthur's dogged determination to be civilized.... but - at least in the confines of the play - he never raises his hand against Arthur.   

Mordred is a most terrifying villain, not because he will destroy you - but because he will make it so very, very easy for you to destroy yourself.  And aren't we all, in the final analysis, our own worst enemies?

Here we go again, tra la

Welcome to the Kingdom of Logon!!!

When last we met, 'twas in the shtetl of Anatevka.  Long ago and far away.... Come with us now to longer ago and not quite so far away, to Merry Olde England.  This year, our 35th, LOGON is proud to present [may I have a flourish of trumpets, please?]:

CAMELOT!

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  Gueneviere and Lancelot.  Mordred the Evil, Merlin the Wise, Morgan LaFey the Magical [these dudes had a thing for the letter M, it would seem]..... passion, love, violence, dragons.....

OK there aren't really any dragons in the show.  Although they do get a few honorable mentions.

Illustrative portrayals  of dragons, such as which a Knight of the Table Round should be able to cleave  in record time  

We've been meeting since late August; auditions are over, the show is cast, and the chorus is well on the way to learning the music (which is beautiful, by the way!!). We're starting to block scenes, the first bits of costume are in. 

 Chain Mail, all the rage in days of yore

According to Wikipedia, "King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defense of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians".  

In other words, we don't really know if there really was a King Arthur at all. The name of the castle/kingdom associated today with King Arthur - Camelot, from which our show takes its name - is actually mentioned for the first time in French romance literature of the 12th century (thank you again, Wiki). Why French, you may ask?  The Lancelot connection!  And thus doth Lancelot become the French Connection.  

Not this one, the other one

Take thy staff in hand, or mount thy noble steed, and journey with us .... to Camelot, where 


 "The rain may never fall til after sundown, by eight the morning fog must disappear......."

Welcome!Park your horse over there and come right in!

T minus 3 1/2 weeks, and counting

Here we go, folks, hurtling towards opening night (less than four weeks to curtain up!) - rehearsals are now four nights per week, the scenery has arrived at the rehearsal hall, costumes should be completed in the next few days.  You can feel the excitement - or is that anxiety? - in the steady hum and buzz throughout the rehearsal hours.  

What if I forget my lines, or leave my costume at home, or get laryngitis and can't sing?

We should all know our lines cold by now, but some of us (mostly me, actually) don't.  And neither do our erstwhile prompters, which can lead to some amazing dialogue.

Mendel: "Reb Lazar, don't shame Reb Tevya at his daughter's wedding!"

[silence]  [somebody calls out: LINE]

Prompter:  why should i listen to you, a man who breaks an agreement

Assorted: no, we said that already - no, that's later - no, that's after the chickens - who says that? didn't he say that before? that's Lazar's line. Where are we? Did we do that part already?

Sheindel:  "What's done is done"  [which is a good guess because somehow that line shows up at least three times in this scene, so - go for it, Sheindel!]



We should all know exactly where we are supposed to be on stage at every moment, but we don't.  Sometimes this can be a problem.

Note to self: it is not considered polite to drive your stiletto heel into the toe of that person who keeps shoving in front of you during the song. 

Second note to self:  remember not to start wandering around aimlessly when you forget where you're supposed to go.  Someone might stab you with their stiletto heel.

We just "met" the scenery last night, and since the cast is also most of the  stage crew, this led to some interesting developments at rehearsal last night (a fender-bender accident between a butcher shop and a barn, for example).

On a personal note, i've discovered that i look TERRIBLE in a kerchief.

Sort of like this, but without the 'adorable'

May have to wear sun glasses so that nobody recognizes me.  How about that, a cool/stoner version of Yente.

Now, lest you think all is total chaos (ha ha ha, what ever gave you THAT impression?), please check this out:  Remember a while back we talked about getting up at dawn to film a promo clip? Well, we finished it, and here it is. ENJOY!

http://youtu.be/3oyFXoQs1cM

Things really are moving along. We're seeing characters develop, we're seeing the dances starting to really take shape, we're seeing the director's hair go grey..... it's all very thrilling. Tickets are on sale and if you want good seats - actually, if you want any seats at all! - you might want to order your tickets NOW.   For further information:  http://www.negevlightopera.com/

Watch this space for more updates as we round the far turn and gallop/limp/stumble/charge into the home stretch....

and if you should notice me asleep in some corner, please don't wake me up. Thank you in advance!

Where are you from, Part II - or - Jewish Geography, anyone?

Remember when you went away to college, and your new neighbors in the dorm asked "Where are you from?"?   That was easy - you named your home town, and that was it.  I'm from Evanston, Illinois; here's a photo from my home town:

Ask me again why I moved to the Negev

Then you came to Israel, and when people asked "Where are you from?", you were an "American" [apologies to the Canadians, and the Mexicans, since we say American when we mean from the United States].

My [former] country tis of thee

Once you finally found LOGON and started coming to rehearsals, "Where are you from?" would again be more local - Ashkelon, Omer, Beer Sheva, the University [which is an entity separate from Beer Sheva, it would seem], Arad, a kibbutz, kishkeveldt......

Was going to post a map of Israel, but didn't want to get political, 

so here's a kitten 

HOWEVER - now we come to rehearsals for Fiddler on the Roof, and suddenly "Where are you from?" take on a whole new meaning -- where did your grandparents come from, or their grandparents - where is your family FROM?  This is about my 17th LOGON show, give or take an extravaganza or two, and never do i remember overhearing so many conversations about "back in the shtetle .....".  

So, dear readers, where are you FROM?  One of my grandparents came from Motele, same as Chaim Weitzman's family. My cousins claim that there was a strong strain of "genius" in Motele, but it sure as heck missed my family. 

Motele

 Photo credit:  Jeff Kronenberg

 Also Motele

Photo credit:  http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/motol/kushnerphotos.htm

Another grandparent came from Mariempoler, somewhere between Minsk and Pinsk.  From there, we have two souvenirs. One is a joke, based on the fact that the town was in a border area often disputed by Poland and Russia:  One guy says, "I hear we've been conquered by Poland again", and the other replies "Thank goodness, enough of those Russian winters".   The other remnant of our roots there:  a certain melody interspersed between the chorus and verses of "Ki Lo Naeh", sung in four part harmony around the table at every family Seder.  Ay yai yai yai yai yai yai yai yai ayyyyyyy.  That's it, all that's left.......

Anyone else from one of these places?  Maybe we're related!  Feel free to write where you are from in the comments section below - who knows, we could end up finding long lost connections.  And don't try to tell me that you're from Kasrilivke, enough of your narishkeit!!!

PS - for performance and ticket information for FIDDLER ON THE ROOF:  http://www.negevlightopera.com/